Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

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ROUTLEDGE CONTEMPORARY SOUTH ASIA SERIES

1 PAKISTAN

Social and cultural transformations in a Muslim nation

Mohammad A. Qadeer

2 LABOR, DEMOCRATIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

IN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Workers and unions

Christopher Candland

3 CHINA–INDIA RELATIONS

Contemporary dynamics

Amardeep Athwal

4 MADRASAS IN SOUTH ASIA

Teaching terror?

Edited by Jamal Malik

MADRASAS IN SOUTH ASIA

Teaching terror?

Edited by Jamal Malik

First published 2008

by Routledge

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS 11

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 13

1: INTRODUCTION 14

The problematique 15

The historical context 17

The political economy of madrasas 19

The ideational resistance 24

The arrangement of contributions 25

Notes 33

2: AHL-I SUNNAT MADRASAS 35

The Madrasa Manzar-i Islam, Bareilly, and Jamia Ashrafiyya, Mubarakpur 35

The Dars-i Nizami and other intellectual issues 36

Madrasa Manzar-i Islam 38

The Madrasa today 42

The Jamia Ashrafiyya, Mubarakpur 42

Early years 42

Consolidation and growth: 1934–72 44

Maulana Abd al-Aziz, founder of the Dar al-Ulum Ashrafiyya 45

Jamia Ashrafiyya, 1990s to the present 46

Maulana Yasin Akhtar Misbahi 49

Conclusion 50

Appendix 51

Table 2.1 Books taught at the Madrasa Manzar-i Islam 51

First year 51

Second year 51

Third year 51

Fourth year 51

Fifth year 51

Sixth year 52

Seventh year 52

Eighth year 52

Table 2.2 Books taught at the Jamia Ashrafiyya, Mubarakpur 55

3: MAKING MUSLIMS 58

Identity and difference in Indian madrasas 58

Dastur-i Amal 60

The dars 61

The non-dars 64

The performance 68

Concluding remark 71

Notes 72

4: MADRASAS 74

The potential for violence in Pakistan? 74

Review of literature 74

Type and number of madrasas 76

Table 4.1 Central boards of madrasas in Pakistan 76

Table 4.2 Sect-wise increase in the number of madrasas 77

Table 4.3 Increase in the madrasas between 1988 and 2000 78

The sectarian divide among the madrasa 79

The curriculum of the madrasas 79

The refutation of other sects and sub-sects 81

The refutation of heretical beliefs 83

The refutation of alien philosophies 83

Poverty and socio-economic class of madrasa students 84

Table 4.4 Causes of joining madrasas given by students 85

Poverty and the roots of religious violence 86

The world-view of madrasa students 87

Madrasas and militancy 87

What made the madrasas militant? 89

Militancy and Islamist fighters 90

Can Islamic militancy be reduced? 91

Conclusion 93

Appendix 4.1 93

Survey 2003 93

Survey of schools and madrasas 93

Table 4.5 Consolidated data of opinions indicating militancy and tolerance among three types of school students in Pakistan in survey 2003 (%) 94

Appendi 4.2 and 4.3 95

Table 4.6 Number of Dini Madrasas by enrolment and teaching staff 95

Appendix 4.3 96

Table 4.7 Dini Madrasas by type of affiliation and area 96

Note 97

5: PAKISTANI MADRASAS AND RURAL UNDERDEVELOPMENT 99

An empirical study of Ahmedpur East 99

Introduction 99

Definition 100

Case analysis 101

Ahmedpur case analysis 101

Figure 5.1 Study area location map 102

Table 5.1 Number of students by sect in madrasas, 2004 103

State of public education and madrasas 105

Figure 5.2 Increase in number of madrasas in APE 1994–2004 105

Table 5.2 Residential versus non-residential madrasas in Ahmedpur 105

Table 5.3 Registration status of madrasas 106

Table 5.4 Comparison of government schools and madrasa enrolment in Ahmedpur 108

Table 5.5 Madrasas involved in sectarianism 109

Table 5.6 Location of trouble spots 111

Environmental and developmental differentiation of sectors 111

Table 5.7 Electrification in key study area locations 112

Conclusions and recommendations 114

Notes 116

6: PAKISTAN’S RECENT EXPERIENCE IN REFORMING ISLAMIC EDUCATION 118

Estimating madrasa enrolment 118

Islamic boarding schools in Pakistani society 119

The recent madaris ordinances 121

Impact of ordinances on Islamic educational reforms 121

Registration of existing madaris 122

Establishment of new Model Dini Madaris 123

Islamic education in private and government schools 124

Madaris in the context of general education 124

Recommendations 125

Note 127

7: THE GENDER OF MADRASA TEACHING 128

I: Zeenat at school and at home 128

II: the case of Shahzad 132

III: the progressive madrasa 134

Conclusions 137

Note 138

8: MADRASA AND MUSLIM IDENTITY ON SCREEN 139

Nation, Islam and Bangladeshi art cinema on the global stage 139

Construction of identities and Bengali–Muslim dichotomy in Bangladesh 140

Islam and Bangladeshi art cinema: Bengali/Muslim conflict on screen 143

Madrasa, Masud and The Clay Bird: Bangladeshi art cinema towards heterogenizing Islam 149

Conclusion 153

9: POWER, PURITY AND THE VANGUARD 155

Educational ideology of the Jama’at-i Islami of India 155

The argument 155

Loss of power, power of loss 156

Context and biography 157

Purity and power 158

Education for power 158

Sources of knowledge and historical lag 160

Mimic the West 161

New alternative 163

College as ‘slaughterhouse’ 163

Features of the alternative 165

Situating the alternative 166

New ship, new captain 167

Educational spectrum 168

Table 9.1 Maududi’s position towards sect/ideology-based educational institutions 169

Notes 171

State, Islam and education 171

Conclusion 172

Notes 173

10: IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION 176

BIBLIOGRAPHY 179

CONTRIBUTORS

Irfan Ahmad received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam in 2005, and is a Postdoctoral Fellow at The International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), Leiden. The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, The Hague, funds his project dealing with Islamic organizations of postcolonial India. His articles have appeared in Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, Economic and Political Weekly and in Peter Van der Veer and Shoma Munshi (eds ) Media, War and Terrorism: Responses from the Middle East and Asia (2004).

Arshad Alam is lecturer at the Center for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi. He is a sociologist interested in issues of Muslim identity, education and politics. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Erfurt, working on Reproduction of Islamic Education in South Asia. His academic publications include articles and book chapters on Islamic education and Islamic reform. He has presented papers at national and international forums.

Saleem Hassan Ali is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Natural Resources. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of environmental conflicts and how ecological factors can promote peace. He has also been involved in promoting environmental education in madrasas and using techniques from environmental planning to study the rise of these institutions in Pakistan. He is the author of many journal articles and bookchapters, he is editor of Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution (forthcoming).

Christopher Candland is Assistant Professor at Wellesley College in the Department of Political Science. His research focuses on the development, particularly in labor, health, education, and religion in South and Southeast Asia. He has been awarded fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Fulbright program, and the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, and has worked at the US Department of State, for the US Congress, and in the United Nations. The author of many articles, he co-edited The Politics of viii Labor in a Global Age: Continuity and Change in Late-Industralizing and Post-Socialist Economies (2001).

Nita Kumar is Brown Chaired Professor of South Asian History at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California and Director at the Centre for Postcolonial Education, NIRMAN, UP, India. She is involved with educational work in India: teaching adults and children, designing curricula and working with families to untangle the home–school relationship. She is the author of many articles and major books include Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories (1994) and Lessons from Schools: A History of Education in Banaras (2000).

Jamal Malik is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt. His research focuses on Muslims in South Asia and Europe. Besides articles and book chapters, his publications include The Colonization of Islam (1996) and Islamische Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien (1997). He is editor of Perspectives of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History 1760–1860 (2000), Muslims in Europe: From the Margin to the Centre (2004), and co-edited Religious Pluralism in South Asia and Europe (2004), Sufism in the West (2006) and Religion und Medien.Vom Kultbild zum Internetritual (2007).

Tariq Rahman is presently National Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and South Asian Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. His major fields of research are in language-teaching and in education in Pakistan. Publications include Language and Politics in Pakistan (1996) and Ideology and Power (2002). His most recent book is titled Denizens of Alien Worlds: A Study of Education, Inequality and Polarization in Pakistan (2004). He established the Quaid-i-Azam chair on Pakistan studies at theuniversity of California, Berkeley (2004–2005).

Zakir Hossain Raju is Associate Professor in Media and Communication at Independent University, Bangladesh. His research focuses on media, Islam and State in postcolonial Asian nations. He published articles on media, nation and identity formation in Bangladesh in international journals and contributed chapters in various anthologies. Received ASIA Fellowship 2006–2007 from Ford Foundation to study film and Muslim identity in Malaysia. Researched and directed seven documentary films including Face in the Millions (1990), Beyond the Borders (1995) and Images under the Shadows (1996).

Usha Sanyal teaches on South Asia and the Middle East at Queens University of Charlotte, at Charlotte, North Carolina. Current research interests include: Different world views in school text books in Pakistan and India, and how they portray national identity; “Barelwi” communities in the Western world, particularly the US. Her books include Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan and His Movement, 1870–1920 (1999) and Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi: In the Path of the Prophet (2005).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The subject of madrasas has now acquired special relevance internationally for a number of reasons. Talking generally about Islam in South Asia, the role of madrasas can hardly be overemphasized. Madrasas have been central to the religious imagination of religious scholars (the ulama) in terms of denominational debates or their activities related to the guarding of the personal sphere of Muslims, or more recently over questions of reform, islah. In fact, most movements of renewal in Islam developed networks of madrasas or at least tried to do so in an effort to institutionalize their ideas and precepts. Islamic education has thus been “constituted” as one of the most important building blocks of any “Islamic society”. It is for this reason that madrasas present an important case to start a discussion about Islam, in this case in South Asia.

In order to understand and discuss different facets of Islamic learning and madrasas, an international workshop on “Islamic Learning in South Asia” took place in Erfurt (Germany) from 19 to 21 May 2005. It was supported financially by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the German Science Association, to whom the editor is most grateful. I would also like to thank the staff of the Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt, in particular Silvia Martens, for their hard work in realizing this volume, which comprises the revised papers presented at the above-mentioned workshop. Some chapters were added to the volume to make it more comprehensive and to introduce important advances in what is an exciting new subject for research, as it focuses on the actors, repertoires, institutions, and ideas emerging in different minority and majority contexts.

It is hoped that this volume will stimulate further interest in this area.

As far as the system of transliteration is concerned, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hindi, and Sanskrit words have been written without diacritical marks, using a simplified version of the format in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (New Edition), unless otherwise noted. It should be emphasized that the avoidance of diacriticals is aimed at making these studies accessible to a wider audience in comparative studies of religion.

Jamal Malik

Erfurt